We continue to receive so many excellent stories about the protests in Iran that we are maintaining this live thread.

Please continue to post all news stories in this thread and ping your lists to this thread so we can increase the overall awareness of what exactly is going on.

BTW, if you post breaking news, please make a reference to this Iranian Alert -- DAY 13 -- LIVE THREAD PING LIST. This way we can get new readers while still keeping a single location of all important news stories on Iran.

Remember Baghdad Bob? This report reminds me of him. Although all other reports I am receiving say the protests are growing and getting smarter this report says the opposite. Sounds like wishful thinking....

TEHRAN, June 21 (AFP) - A top Iranian police official on Saturday declared nearly 10 days of anti-regime protest to be over, while the Islamic republic's chief prosecutor vowed that those detained in the unrest would be severely punished.

"Our society is now enjoying maximum security, and there are no problems anywhere in the country," Tehran's police chief Morteza Talai was quoted as saying by the official news agency IRNA.

Talai blamed the protests, which erupted around Tehran University on June 10 and then spread to provincial cities, on "American government-financed foreign television stations" -- a reference to US-based opposition satellite channels.

"We as a police force, with all our power, will stand against those who want to jeopardise the country's security," he added.

The protests have been marked by fierce clashes between demonstrators and hardline vigilantes loyal to the nearly 25-year-old clerical regime, and many radical demonstrators also chanted slogans against Iran's supreme leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, a serious crime in the Islamic Republic.

Hundreds of people -- including hardline vigilantes -- have been detained in the past week, although many have been quickly released.

The protests, blamed by authorities on the United States and their on-the-ground "agitators", appear to have fizzled out, although student leaders said Saturday that they were planning to keep up their demonstrations with exam boycotts and sit-ins.

Iranian reformers: to resign or not to resign? The Daily Star By Ahmad Sadri

June 21, 2003

To resign or not to resign is the question gnawing at the reformers of Iran, today more than any time in their six-year tenure. Irans regional and international isolation and the extreme proximity of the business end of the Great Satan have increased the stakes of the resignation game. Reformers have warned (most recently in an open letter signed by 137 MPs) that a semblance of legitimacy is the only prophylactic against American intervention. And yet, the hard-liners continue to treat the threats of resignation as a game of chicken. They appear to dare the reform to go ahead and make their day, damn the resulting American occuberation (occupation plus liberation.) It may be too late for the reformers to extract real concessions with a credible show of will to resign. But such a will never existed, because the concept of resignation as a moral and practical act has not been worked out in Irans emerging political culture. The reformists feel pinned. Resigning may appear as dereliction of duty, while staying on continues to cast them as the fall guy in a political charade.

There is no doubt that the hard-liners are playing hard ball. The unrelenting waves of right-wing revenge that have whipped the hapless ship of reform for the past five years are once more gathering as a squall of new aggression by the goons of the Hizbullah. Meanwhile the noose of the right-wing judiciary continues to choke the life out of the reformist students and intellectuals. The Council of Guardians has again humiliated President Khatami and the Parliament by rejecting their twin bills aimed at reclaiming a measure of political authority for the elected institutions of the Parliament and the presidency. The bill will be returned to the Parliament and a watered-downed version of it will probably pass the Council of Guardians just in time to do next to no good for an outgoing reformist Parliament and president. The strategic merits of mass resignation aside, the reformers will do well to ponder the legitimacy and feasibility of political resignation as an integral part of any democratic social order.

Politics is a bid to participate in the acquisition of power for the purpose of implementing an ideal. As ideals are not always attainable in their entirety, a responsible politician might have to compromise in order to gradually approach his or her goal. Compromise might be a dirty word in the parlance of logicians and moralists but it must not be considered as such in the world of responsible politics. An uncompromising artist is in all likelihood a good artist but an uncompromising politician is nothing but a fanatic.

However, compromise is only a means for achieving a political goal. Like the search for power, compromise is never legitimate in itself or as means to private ends. Once a politicians axial ideals have been compromised there remains no room for compromise. Once hope for attaining or approaching the ideal is lost both compromise and the search for power must cease. Thus, resignation is of the essence of democratic political ethics. A political system devoid of resignations must be viewed with suspicion. Of course, it will not do to exhort others to abandon their livelihood on idealistic grounds. As modern politicians might face the moral obligation to resign at any time, they must be financially and psychologically prepared for a Plan B in their lives.

They must emerge into politics from a suspended profession and possess a will to leave the glories of public office for a humble but honest living. The German sociologist Max Weber argued that politicians must live for and not off politics. I believe that with the rejection of the twin bills by the Council of Guardians that moment arrived for the Iranian reformers. The ongoing spontaneous combustion of Tehrans streets is another sign of the hopelessness of the cause of political reform.

Ahmad Sadri, professor and chairman of the Department of Sociology and Anthropology at Lake Forest College, Illinois, USA, writes a regular commentary for The Daily Star

Students in Iran are rebelling against the Ayatollahs. Is there anything we can do to help? The truth is we have very few tools to influence events in Iran, and even if we had more it's not clear we'd know how to use them. But there is one huge tool we do control that will certainly have an impact on Iran: It's called Iraq.

Iraq, like Iran, is a majority Shiite country, with myriad religious links with Iran. If the Bush team could make a psychological and political breakthrough with Iraqi Shiites, and be seen as helping them build a progressive, pluralistic state in Iraq, it would have a big impact on Iran  much bigger than anything America alone could say or do.

No one should have any illusions that Iran's Islamic theocracy is about to fold tomorrow. Iran's clerical rulers are tough and ruthless and have a monopoly of power. But many of their people detest them. And while Iran will play out by its own logic, there is no question that if the other big, predominantly Shiite state in the region, the one right next door, the one called Iraq, were to become a reasonably decent, democratizing polity of the sort Iranians are demanding for themselves, it would pressure Iran's clerics to open up.

A friend in Tehran sent me an e-mail message Thursday, saying, "The Iranian state-run TV is just reporting how Americans have failed in Iraq. [But] average people, like my grocer, actually think Iraq and Afghanistan have become heaven. It seems that they come up with the opposite version of what the government is trying to tell them. My grocer keeps on saying, `When are the Americans coming here? They fixed Afghanistan and Iraq and we are still miserable. . . .' "

We do not want the story in Iran to be America versus the Ayatollahs. We want the story to be the Iranian people versus the Ayatollahs, and the best way to foster that is by showing Iranians that there is another way and it's happening right next door. In short, America's intervention in Iraq is a two-for-one sale: improve Iraq, improve Iran. Buy one, get one free. Mess up one, mess up the other.

So then, how do we forge a breakthrough with the Shiites of Iraq, who make up 60 percent of that country? Let's start with some good news. While the U.S. forces in Iraq are meeting mounting resistance from the remnants of Saddam's regime, these are primarily Iraqi Sunni Muslims who sense that their long hold on power in Iraq is over.

"The fact is, the Iraqi Shiites have clearly decided to give the Americans a grace period to see how they intend to rebuild Iraq," says Yitzhak Nakash, the Brandeis University professor whose book, "The Shi`is of Iraq," is one of the most important works on this subject. "Iraqi Shiite religious leaders have thus far not issued any fatwas against the U.S. troops. They have adopted a wait-and-see approach."

Just last week Abdelaziz al-Hakim, a key Iraqi Shiite leader, gave an interview to the newspaper Al Hayat in which he stressed that Iraqi Shiites were not under the control of Iran and had no intention for now of engaging in violent resistance to the U.S. forces in Iraq.

This grace period from Iraqi Shiites is the most important thing happening in Iraq, and the U.S. needs to take advantage of it. The U.S. could start, suggested Mr. Nakash, with President Bush apologizing for the fact that the U.S., in 1991, encouraged Iraqi Shiites to rise up against Saddam, and then abandoned them, leading to the slaughter of thousands of Shiites in southern Iraq. Visible gestures from the world's only superpower  affirming the dignity of the Iraqi Shiites and their right to a share of power in proportion to their numbers  could help lock in this grace period and foster a mass base for moderate Shiite politics.

What the U.S. also needs to do, argued Mr. Nakash, is "create conditions for the Shiites of Iraq to experiment with defining relations between religion and politics. Their challenge will be to find a compromise allowing clerics in the seminaries of Najaf to focus on matters relating to religious worship and learning  and have their impact on society felt that way  while leaving politics to the politicians in Baghdad."

Bottom line: We need to get Iraq right before we raise expectations about Iran, and getting Iraq right will be hard. But the key to getting Iraq right is getting the Shiites on our side  if not openly, at least tacitly  while helping them nurture a progressive political system. Do that, and it will encourage Iranians to do the same. Fail to do that, and we will lose in both Iraq and Iran.

The anniversary of the July 9th national uprising is near. The uprising was doubtlessly an event that not only caused the night worshipping manipulators of religion ruling our country to tremble but it also revealed the democracy seeking struggles of the third generation.

Indeed, the worshippers of the night carried out an assault on the university. They attacked, murdered, set fires, and left, but the doves of freedom remain incarcerated. Doves such as Manoochehr Mohammadi, Abbas Deldar, Akbar Mohammadi, Ahmad Batebi, Mehrdad Lohrasbi, Javid Tehrani, Mostafa Piran, Ali Afshari, Koroush Sahti, Abbas Fakhravar, Mehdi Sanjari, Abbas Amir Entezam, Nasser Zerafshan have been held as political prisoners and Ezat Ebrahimnejad lost his life in the struggle for freedom. But the aggressors do not know that these events have ignited a fire in the hearts of Iranian youth that will blaze on until the enemies of Iran and Iranians have been reduced to ashes.

It is up to us to gather in great numbers during the anniversary of the national uprising so that we make apparent our support for our youth and the doves of freedom during this sensitive time in our national history.

The students and youth of Iran have extended a hand to you compatriots for support.

The gathering of the student movement will take place on Sunday July 6, 2003, at four in the afternoon in front of the Federal Building in Los Angeles.

On that day together we will call for the release of all political prisoners. We will shout "No to an Islamic Republic" and we will tell the world that "We want a referendum".

Looking forward to seeing all of you beloved compatriots,

Gholamreza Mohajerinejhad Alliance of Iranian Students Organizing Committee for July 9th Gathering

TEHRAN, Iran -- Iranian student leaders said hundreds of students had been arrested following a wave of protests against Islamic clerical rule, and warned the crackdown could make them adopt more radical and violent methods.

The student leaders, who came to parliament to protest the arrests, said Sunday that since Thursday 87 students had been detained in Tehran, 250 in the northwestern city of Urumiyeh, 105 in the northeastern city of Sabzevar and 30 in Hamadan in western Iran.

"Even if they send us to prison and take us to solitary confinement there are others who have more daring slogans than us and they will confront the system with more violent methods," Saeed Razavi Faqih, one of the student leaders, told Reuters.

"Today we are sitting on a keg of gunpowder. Anyone who wants to play with this fire will be burned," he said.

The protests have been lauded as a cry for freedom by the United States, which also accuses Iran of seeking to develop nuclear weapons. Iran denies any ambition to build atomic arms and has accused U.S. officials of blatant interference in its internal affairs.

While venting most of their anger at the conservative opponents of reformist President Mohammad Khatami, demonstrators have also called on the president to resign for failing to deliver promised improvements in justice, democracy and social freedoms after six years in power.

Students and reformist lawmakers said the students had been arrested by plainclothes security officials carrying arrest warrants authorizing them to detain anyone under suspicion. The whereabouts of many of the detained was unknown, they said.

"There has been a mass arrest order. They can arrest whoever they want," one MP told Reuters on condition of anonymity.

'Usual response to protest'

Diplomats said the arrests appeared to be aimed at snuffing out a recent spate of pro-democracy protests centered around university campuses which began in Tehran two weeks ago and spread to other cities.

Although those demonstrations have all but fizzled out, authorities are eager to prevent them from erupting again around the July 9 anniversary of the violent attack on a Tehran University dormitory by hardline Islamic vigilantes in 1999.

"It's the usual response to protest. They want to try to round up any troublemakers to prevent any big rallies on July 9," one diplomat in Tehran said.

It was not immediately possible to confirm the number of student arrests. Officials have said around 500 "hooligans" were arrested during the recent protests in Tehran but that only a handful of students were among those detained.

Among those arrested was the son of reformist MP Ahmad Shirzad, a fact which students said highlighted the impotency of Khatami's government compared with powerful unelected conservative clerics who have opposed his reformist agenda.

"I don't have any hope when the son of an MP is arrested. I don't even have hope in Khatami," said Aydin Aminizadeh, wife of arrested student leader Mehdi Aminizadeh. "I only hope the media and international organizations pressure them to secure their release," she said.

Some 166 of the 290 lawmakers in the reformist-controlled parliament read out a statement condemning the arrests and attacks on student dormitories by hardline vigilantes fiercely loyal to Iran's Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei.

I was told that this event and it's sponsor, Gholamreza Mahajerinejhad, do NOT represent the Student Movement. I was told, he was once associated with it, but that the movement has long ago disassociated themselves from him. I was told that he is part of "pro-stalinist" movement.

I will get you the dates of the "real" student movements demontrations soon.

`When are the Americans coming here? They fixed Afghanistan and Iraq and we are still miserable. . . .'

See I told you guys that this was going to happen and look right here. I know this is anecdotal evidence but if the revolution has stalled because these people are going to wait for the US then the blame can only be put on the people who pressured our government to make statements of support. We haven't ever been in a position to help them. Our plate is over flowing right now.

20
posted on 06/22/2003 12:00:43 PM PDT
by grapeape
(Will posters start putting something on your about pages so we know who we are talking to?)

I have been told that last night Iran's regime flew in three aircraft full of men from Syria to support assist in putting down the protest movement. They number around one thousand men. They are being housed at a base outside of Tehran and given uniforms.

It would appear the regime is running out of its own resources and needs help of other terrorist regimes to support it.

Well--The fact that they are running out of men might be in part because they sent so many to do their dirty work in Iraq. I hope the Syrian thugs lose their way in dark in twisty alleyways where the rebels can give them some "souvenirs" to induce them to return home.

Powell: We Have to Provide Encouragement and Support to Those Seeking the Right to Speak Out

June 22, 2003 Reuters MSNBC News

DEAD SEA, Jordan - U.S. Secretary of State Colin Powell said on Sunday the United States was not preparing for ''aggressive'' action against Iran, despite concerns about its nuclear intentions.

''We are against Iranian support of terrorist activities, against (a) nuclear weapons development programme. We hope that the Iranians will not play an unhelpful role in our reconstruction efforts in Iraq.

''And we are watching what is happening within the country, the churning that's taking place within the population and we have to provide encouragement and support to those who are seeking the right to speak out,'' Powell said at a session of a World Economic Forum meeting in Jordan.

''But for some to go beyond that and say the United States is getting ready for something aggressive or looking for another place to have a conflict, it is absolutely wrong.''

TEHRAN, Iran -- Student leaders held sit-ins Sunday to protest the detention of classmates following last week's fierce clashes between pro-clergy militants and anti-government demonstrators, in which police said 520 people were arrested.

The clashes broke out when university marches that began June 10 expanded into protests against the hard-line Islamic clerics who rule Iran. Militants attacked protesters to put down the marches, at one point breaking into dormitories during the night and pulling students from their beds.

Police Gen. Mahmoud Japalaqi was quoted as saying Sunday that 520 people, including 18 women, were arrested. "Only 10 of them are students and the rest of rioters are ruffians," Japalaqi told the government-run daily Iran.

But student leaders holding sit-ins in front of the parliament and at Tehran University said most of the detainees were classmates.

"We believe more than half of those detained are students. I know about three dozen who were either arrested or disappeared," student leader Hasan Shoaei told The Associated Press outside parliament, where he and about 30 other student leaders and families of detainees gathered.

Inside Tehran University, about 50 people held a similar sit-in demanding information on the detainees.

"As a mother, at least I want to know where my son is being held and what for. Police and judiciary have simply refused to answer my questions," said Somayeh Ahmadi, whose son, 21-year-old Tehran University student Naser Mohammadi was arrested by plainclothes security agents early last week.

Inside the reformist-dominated parliament, 166 lawmakers signed a statement denouncing the "savage and ruthless attacks" by the hard-line militants against the students, and expressing support for the sit-ins.

After the attack on the university dorms on June 14, police later arrested scores of pro-clerical militants, and the hard-line judiciary has promised to put them on trial. The militants, who support Iran's supreme leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, are rarely punished for their crimes in Iran.

"Unfortunately, because people's just demands are ignored ... small social protests snowball into crises and riots," the lawmakers said in a statement read out on Tehran radio Sunday.

Later Sunday, Parliamentary speaker Mahdi Karroubi met with the student leaders and promised to help.

"We will naturally try to resolve this problem in line with the constitution," the official Islamic Republic News Agency quoted Karroubi as saying.

6/22/03 Some 166 Iranian MPs voice outrage at brutal treatment of students

Some 166 members of parliament on Sunday expressed outrage at 'brutal treatment of students' by the lawless plainclothes men and at the same time called on students to be careful about infiltration of suspicious elements into their ranks, IRNA reported from Tehran.

P> They said in a statement that effective and sustainable reform calls for safeguarding law and order so that the students should respect them in the protest demonstrations.

The statement said that sometimes small demonstrations for a specific demand turns to a crisis in the absence of necessary means to criticize the political system and lack of attention to the people's democratic demands.

The student movement has displayed maturity and managed to distinguish between lawful methods and adventurism, the statement said.

The MPs condemned the attack on Allameh Tabatabaei University dormitory and said that the attackers proved their hostile attitude toward the students.

They also complained against the arrest of students and political activists who support the reform program of President Mohammad Khatami.

Political rallies usually take place in the academic centers every year on July 8 in support of the reform movement.

EHRAN, June 21  Jilla, a prosperous homemaker, has been trying to outwit the Iranian government's campaign to jam Persian-language satellite television stations based in Los Angeles.

First she adjusted her satellite dish. Then she attached an empty can. She even tied a pot lid to a mop, and stood the lid upright facing the dish. No luck.

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"I have become restless; I have no idea what's going on with the protests," she said, staring helplessly at a European music channel.

Jilla, 46, said her family and friends were taking part in the protests against the government, which spread to other cities in Iran.

The protests sprang up on June 11 and were made to order for the stations, which oppose the government and are eager to add to the pressure.

President Bush has also seized on the issue, insisting that the government take heed of the protesters.

Channel One, which has been broadcasting live 24 hours a day during the protests, has become extremely popular. Shahram Homayoon, an Iranian journalist based in Los Angeles, has been the station's on-air host for up to 21 hours a day, and he said in a telephone interview that he was determined to continue, "until people reach freedom."

The programming includes a summary of the news in Iran and patriotic music. But for most of the day, Mr. Homayoon fields phone calls from Iranians  broadcasting the experiences and emotions of the demonstrators back to their own country.

A weeping mother called to say that her son had been arrested and that she feared she would never see him again. If the authorities harm him, she said, she will become a suicide bomber against the government.

Another woman called to say that she was badly beaten after being arrested and held for three days.

One man called to suggest that depositors withdraw money from Iranian banks because the government was using the money "to buy batons and weapons against people."

In Iran many of those who came to the demonstrations said they did so after listening to the foreign broadcasts. "I thought I should come if everyone else is coming," said Ahmad, a 34-year-old civil servant, who attended a rally with his wife and 3-year-old daughter.

The protests began as a reaction by a few hundred students at Tehran University against plans to privatize Iran's universities. The same day, four satellite broadcasters in Los Angeles  National Iranian TV (better known as NITV), Azadei, PARS TV and Channel One, which are all opposed to the government here  began calling on viewers to join the students.

That night, thousands of protesters drove to the dormitory area of the university after midnight, snarling traffic and honking their horns.

A week ago at Friday Prayers, the former president, Ali Akbar Hashemi Rafsanjani, warned Iranians not to pay attention to the foreign broadcasts. "Be careful not to be trapped by the evil television networks that Americans have established," he said.

The minister of information, Ali Yunessi, said America was waging a psychological war against Iran.

This is not the first time these stations, which are illegal here but are popular among people of all classes, have mobilized Iranians. The stations called people to candlelight vigils in support of the victims of the Sept. 11 attacks in the United States. A few weeks later, they helped create an antigovernment demonstration after the national soccer team won a World Cup match.

Political analysts in Tehran believe that the success of the stations is partly a result of the crackdown by hard-liners against the free press in recent years. Nearly 100 pro-reform journals and newspapers have been closed since 1997, and circulation has dropped to just over one million, from more than three million, since 1997, according to the Ministry of Culture and Islamic Guidance.

In addition, the state-run television monopoly is widely seen as little more than a propaganda arm of the government.

It referred to those arrested as "antirevolutionary hooligans and thugs," largely ignoring the violent attacks last week on the demonstrators by vigilante groups believed to be controlled by the country's supreme clerical leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei.

"People have lost their confidence in the domestic media," said Mashalah Shamsolvaezin, a journalist and political scientist living in Iran. "In the absence of active national media, foreign-based media have become powerful," he said. "But because they do not have reporters on the ground, they are incapable of understanding the real situation in the country and so their major role becomes stirring noise and spreading rumors."

The foreign stations are also viewed with suspicion because of their support for Reza Pahlavi, the son of the former shah of Iran.

Still, people have "taken refuge in watching these TV stations because they talk about their daily concerns," said Jilla, the homemaker.

"When they harass women for their Islamic dress or they bust young people," she said, "the stations report them. I feel the world has become a small place and the opposition's TV and radio stations can bring change."

Sporadic but organized protests rocked again, this evening, several cities accross Iran and especially the Capital in its eastern and southern parts.

Several thousands of active protesters and supporters in cars came into the streets despite the heavy presence of the regime's brutal forces.

Sporadic clashes have happened in the Tehran Pars area as well as in Hamedan, Mashad and Rasht.

The actions which are smaller but more organized intend to keep the pressure on the regime forces but the biggest rallies ever prepared are to take place on July 9th at the occasion of the 4th anniversary of the 1999 Student Uprising.

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